


Cara Sposa

by orphan_account, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bottom!Hannibal, Kitchen Sex, M/M, Marking, Mostly Pwp, Murder Family, Power Play, Top!Will, vaguely canon, very dark Will, very mild blood play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 22:29:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He feels his fingers tremble again, a small, delicate motion, and locks his jaw. He doubts insinuating himself between Hannibal and his work, distracting him with his mouth – lips hot to the other man’s, then lower to his jaw, his throat, his chest and down – as he sometimes did to get rid of the shaking, to bring his mind back to steady neutral, would work today.</i>
</p><p>Will has been slightly on edge since he'd allowed himself to become a killer. And some days, trusted and true tactics just don't work anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cara Sposa

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt by the wonderful [revnickie](http://revnickie.tumblr.com/) who requested some bottom!Hannibal. We changed the original prompt just a little - this isn't Will's first time doing this - but I hope you like it anyway, darling one.
> 
> The title - and initial track Will walks in to hear - can be found [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQspx3DUFBY).

His hands are shaking. 

Will flexes his fingers and frowns when it doesn’t help. They’ve been shaking all week, on and off.

At the start of the week it had been easier, he’d come home and push Hannibal to anger, rile him far enough to end up sprawled and pinned against the nearest surface, getting rug burn against his chest and knees until they had both laid still, sated and shaking, adrenaline and anger and nerves fucked out of them both. But these last few days it had been far more difficult.

He’d dropped the remote during a lecture, stopping mid-sentence to regard the little device on the carpet. The pattern had wavered, not enough to draw up alarm bells of fatigue or dizziness, but a strange sort of throbbing, like a heartbeat. He’d knelt to take it up, felt the cool plastic like the handle of a knife and had to close his eyes before his breathing hitched. Before someone noticed.

He’d cut the lecture short, for the first time in a long time happy to see Jack in his doorway, watching him with all the warmth of a storm cloud. 

His hands had shaken in Jack’s office too, as he’d listened to the man recount the details of the kill, details he knew so well already he could have given the brief himself. He’d adjusted his glasses briefly, enough for the frame to sit just so where he wouldn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes, and pushed his hands into his pockets.

They didn’t stop shaking at the crime scene, where he’d spilled half the pills he had intended to swallow on the ground in the parking lot, vindictively dragging them into white powder with his lips drawn back in a grimace. He’d waved off Bev and her well-meaning prodding, had gritted his teeth behind closed lips as Jack had berated him his work ethic.

They shake against the steering wheel of his truck as he drives home, eyes on the road but unfocused, keeping the car steady and going in the right lane simply with muscle memory. His mind isn’t here, it’s deep behind a pendulum that swings quite a different way lately.

This isn’t nerves. This isn’t anger or anguish or adrenaline running rampant through his system. This isn’t the elation after a kill, nor the guilt preceding it. This is worse. It’s impatience.

Hannibal is in the kitchen when Will gets home, Cara Sposa gentle through the speakers that rest hidden throughout the house, and for a moment Will just closes his eyes, brings one hand up to gently rest, palm down, in the air in front of him, turning gently up and sweeping through the air to get a feel for the aria. When he opens his eyes again the hand in front of him is no longer shaking.

It takes sixteen steps to get from the hall to the archway of the kitchen and Will times them well, silent against the plush carpet, body turning with cat-like grace to glance into the space, gauge by the way the shadows move where Hannibal stands, what he’s working on.

He waits for the music to settle, the brief interlude quickening his heart, before stepping into the room properly; eyes just above the line the frames of his glasses hold steady for him, expression a neutral sort of predatory, one he learned quickly to mimic from Hannibal. When the other looks up, Will just raises his chin.

“Handel?” he asks quietly.

"Rinaldo," Hannibal agrees, washing his hands with shifting movements of his shoulders that put one in mind of a tiger making the broad pleasured gesture of a housecat.

At first, William had thought that the hand washing was a compulsion. 

Now he knows it is simply the order that is the compulsion. The habit, the logical steps. Hannibal washes his hands exactly when he needs to, not because he has to. The tic is one that is valuable, Will Graham thinks, in a murderer.

"The opera was some success for Handel, but after he passed away it was not staged for more than two hundred years," Hannibal elucidates, as the aria chops itself into a certain agonized urgency under his voice. 

Hannibal folds the towel he had dried his fingers on, twice the long way, and then once in half to form a neat rectangle, and he replaces it in the exact location he had found it. Four and a half inches to the left of the sink, where his hand would fall on it automatically after the next lather and rinse and repeat. He always repeated.

William is learning him better, these days.

"Your ear is getting better," Hannibal observes, watching the challenge rising up in Will's eyes, even in the face of his own calm. 

Will watches him work his tongue over one of his incisors beneath his lip. He has learned that it means Hannibal is remembering some flavor he enjoyed. He has learned the exact feel of that incisor under his own tongue, and he can feel the ghost sensation of the sharp tip before he realizes he is mirroring the motion.

"How did it go with Jack?" Hannibal asks, registering the mirrored hesitation and taking up his knife again to work thin partitions into vegetables. 

Will’s eyes fall to the motion, eyes slipping out of focus again as he watches familiar hands cut familiar things.

“It went,” he replies, tone flat, the sound clicking at the end of the word. He registers the smile on Hannibal’s face, small, precise, not actually there unless you knew to look for it – Hannibal had a way of smiling, almost grinning, without showing any outward sign of doing so beyond the gentle narrowing of his eyes that you would miss if you blinked.

Will hadn’t missed it. Not before this, and certainly not now. The expression sets a strange anger through him; he has yet to master it himself, his own pleasure is shown through normal means, the quirking of lips, the tilt of his head…

The knife moves with grace and practice, quick motions for something delicate and exact. One cut after another, again and again, keeping time with the music. Watching Hannibal work was art in itself, a dance.

He feels his fingers tremble again, a small, delicate motion, and locks his jaw. He doubts insinuating himself between Hannibal and his work, distracting him with his mouth – lips hot to the other man’s, then lower to his jaw, his throat, his chest and down – as he sometimes did to get rid of the shaking, to bring his mind back to steady neutral, would work today.

He finds, instead, that when the knife loses its careful rhythm, it’s because Hannibal is no longer holding it; his arm twisted back in a painful grip against his back, his other caught and turned knuckles-down against the cold counter. He lets out a breath, a slow, brief thing, pleased, as around them the aria fades to its end and another takes its place.

The first time, Hannibal had chuckled. Had demanded to know if Will found him interesting then, at last, when the light had come on behind Will Graham's eyes and swung wildly in the darkness like the last bulb miles below the earth. Then, he had fought like a cat, before he'd realized that Will wasn't apprehending him.

This time, he relaxes into it - experience having taught him when to go stiff and resist and when to flow like water. It isn't that the resistance goes out of him, it's simply that Hannibal focuses it - makes Will work to keep his hold on Hannibal's wrist, while the man's other hand pushes the cutting board aside, out of the way, the knife recovered from its spin across the counter and laid flat in a parallel line along the side of the cutting board.

It's a tally mark in Will's favor that Hannibal surrenders the blade. A mark of family that he tolerates this at all.

"You're shaking," Hannibal observes, and Will tightens his fingers on the man's wrist until he feels the small bones inside it move against each other, until the tremble cannot transmit. Hannibal pushes himself back, leaning low over the counter - a baited trap or an invitation or both.

“I am,” there’s a breath at the end, a suggestion of more that Will doesn’t surrender. He swallows instead.

He no longer has to close his eyes for the pendulum to swing, each swipe leaving a careful, bloody mark across Hannibal’s back, then up; hair mussed then pulled completely from its order, bruises crawling soft, then darker, up past the perfect turn of the collar at the man’s neck. Another swing, and they’re gone, Hannibal still pristine and presented before him.

He eases the grip, just enough, thumb running gentle against the delicate, thin skin on the inside of Hannibal’s wrist, not a reassurance so much as deliberation, a memory. The crime scene had been a messy thing, blood and apparently careless cutting. He remembers every nick, every slow parting of skin… remembers how Hannibal had taken his pocket square to wipe at the blood against his wrist, just against his wrist, an almost comically unnecessary motion considering the rest of him.

Another mark of family was allowing Will to feel the blood hot against him, and experience that with him rather than wear a clear plastic suit. Gloves were a necessity, the rest a formality.

Will blinks, two quick things to bring his mind to the now, again. He presses close against Hannibal as the other presses back into him, their bodies two smooth lines that fit so well, and when his fingers settle over the cool steel handle of a knife, it is his own allowance, his own favor to the man breathing under him, to take the correct one for dissecting meat – not fish.

The metal sings when he pulls it from the block.

Hannibal does not wince, but his breath goes still, his attention slides right where Will wants it, right where Hannibal would want it, if the positions were reversed. He doesn't turn his head all the way, but enough so that the sharp jut of cheekbone, the curve of eyelashes becomes visible, and Will knows he is looking at the knife.

Approving, perhaps, of his own influence.

"Is this a sort of narcissism?" Will asks, his tone as sharp as the edge of the knife. It borders rude, he knows, but he also knows that Hannibal will allow it from him, that he has a great deal more tolerance for Will for some reason that Will is still picking at. "The reflection of you in me, doing this?"

Hannibal doesn't quite laugh, but he makes a start to the sound before Will pushes the air out of him. 

"I might make an argument for masturbation," Hannibal answers, tone strained but still amused. Will slips the knife beneath the collar of his whites - the chef's shirt he wears in the kitchen to keep his suits from taking stain. Easier to bleach. Hannibal does not stiffen even then, though he makes faint protest when Will cuts the fabric. The angle is awkward, the knife close to skin.

It would be just as easy to flay his skin open over the flaps of shirt when he parts it down the whole length of Hannibal's back, but he doesn't, settles instead for a nick against Hannibal's ribs - and that makes him jump, just a little. He can still feel when Will slips beneath his mask, after all.

He presses his mouth to the hot, red well of blood and takes it in.

It’s what Hannibal had used to bring Will’s defences down low enough to get him here, to even allow the man to open up to this as fully and as perfectly as he has.

“You need control, Will,” he’d said, hands clasped together before him as he sat forward, balanced on the edge of his chair as Will was deliberately pressing himself back into his own. “I can be your paddle but only for so long, and only in so much. I cannot steer you.”

And Will had looked at him then, with the most deliciously repressed hunger in his eyes, a want so strong it was almost magnetic. It had taken words, and patience, and indulging habits he wanted to break Will of eventually to get him here, with his lips hot against Hannibal’s skin.

Slowly but surely, Will was gaining his control, learning to chart his course and paddle alone. If he allows himself to, Hannibal feels a cold worry settle in at the thought, that one day he will be unnecessary to Will Graham, that one day, his curiosity and interest will direct elsewhere and Hannibal will have to fight to keep it.

It will not be for a long time yet, ever, if he can direct Will in such a way as to make him believe all his choices were his own. For now, he gives him the control – he does not give surrender, but he lowers his own defences enough. 

Will feels a strange duality, with the taste of blood in his mouth, with Hannibal's thoughts in his head. He feels like a butterfly pinned down to a page on a long, thin needle - except he's the one pushing Hannibal down against the blank page of his own stainless steel counter top.

"Are you anxious because you know we'll do it again," Hannibal makes conversation, eyes studying the prints his palms make in smudges against the surface of his countertop. Will knows how he will scour it afterward, eyes alert to the task, shoulders rounded into it the way they were rounded up against Will now.

"Or because we haven't yet?" 

The question makes sense, but Will doesn't want to think on it now, instead he lifts himself in an arch and feels the red stain in his mouth, tastes it salt and sweet and still warm. It will have never grown cold, transferred from living flesh to his mouth. He runs his tongue over his own incisor, then, feels the blunted, omnivorous point.

"I'm anxious because I sense it in you, when I go and look," Will answers, the music a low, slow counterpoint to his breaths. The beats are the measure of footsteps, the silent rolling ones he'd learned from Hannibal. 

His concession is a single sound, from low in Hannibal's chest, and Will slides the knife beneath the band of his pants, heedless of the expense. He can feel the back of the blade slide over Hannibal's skin where he finds the angle and hollow of his hipbone, and then Hannibal protests, shifts enough to unpin one of his own arms from beneath himself to try and stop the motion before the damage is irreparable.

"They go with a suit," he warns, beginning to resist. 

It’s not a quick motion, nor a particularly violent one. But the knife point turns, just barely, and the pressure placed against it and the soft skin of Hannibal’s hip is palpable. It does not break skin, but the promise is there.

“You have others.” Will reminds him, tone patronizingly indifferent. Hannibal has used it on him before, reminding him he’d killed before, when Will’s first victim with him had laid at his feet, still warm but no longer moving, and Will’s eyes had grown wide, the blue dulled in panic. This suggests just as little regard for the man’s feelings on the matter.

He presses close again, pushing a sigh out of Hannibal and breathing it in himself.

“Would it be easier to get remade,” he asks, “Or to attempt to wash blood from it?”

For a moment they’re silent, neither move, and Will can feel the tension in Hannibal that suggests his pleasure in this game is dwindling, not quite far enough to bring about retaliation but enough to be a warning, to suggest that Will would find something just as precious to him in danger next time.

Right then he hardly cares.

Either option disagrees with his inherent neatness. The need for order rides hard under Hannibal's skin, like the point of the knife does over it. Neither quite breaks to the other side, but the threat is there in both cases. Hannibal shifts under Will, levering himself against the counter. 

There's power in the motion, translated through his muscles and the shift, a warning. Hannibal thinks himself the more dangerous animal, because Will had taken the original flavor of this from him. He doesn't quite know yet that Will is evolving. 

When Hannibal's arm pulls taut in his grip, with his grip suddenly sweaty and hot against Hannibal's wrist and the other threatens to slip his grip through torque and slide, Will finds a compromise. He works the knife blade along Hannibal's skin, feels it nick and drag low on the man's belly, but he slides it instead between the join at the waistline, and severs the stitches that hold the invisible catch, the button at the top of the fly.

Hannibal growls when the button slides down his leg, trapped on the inside of the fabric, and pushes, tries to gain leverage then.

“Stop.” It’s a request, for now, not a command, and Will’s lips press against Hannibal’s neck, nose just behind his ear as he closes his eyes and breathes, holding them both in the same precarious balance over the cold counter. The knife is at a far more delicate join of skin than it had been. 

Will sighs, a sound of pure, hot enjoyment breathed out over Hannibal’s skin, and turns his head a little as he works the knife behind the catch, to cut the button from the front as well, lips pulling back in a grin when he hears the button impact the floor. He adjusts his grip on the knife and slides the zipper down, tooth by tooth, undamaged.

When he pulls back, he can see the light smear of blood against Hannibal’s neck – his own – where Will’s lips had been. And suddenly the impatience is back, the shaking moving from his hands up his arms until his entire body is caressed with soft tremors. He has the presence of mind to set the knife in the sink so as not to drop it before he bites, hard, against the skin just between Hannibal’s shoulders. The hand not pinning the man down, fingers tightening as he feels the twisting struggle again, insinuates itself beneath the fine silk of Hannibal’s boxers and grips him, a harsh closure of fingers over flesh and enough to bring a gasp forth from the man under him – breath fogging the counter and vanishing.

As much protest as Hannibal might seem to make, Will can feel him responding - hard not to when they are in so much contact. He knows, because he can see in the warped unclear reflection beneath them, that Hannibal's eyes have closed.

Will Graham feels him swallow, feels him twist once slowly in a motion that isn't a struggle but almost an acceptance, and he knows Hannibal only allows this because Will has become just as dangerous as him and more unpredictable while he settles into his new skin. When Hannibal submits, presses himself flatter against the counter and shifts only to move one ankle further from the other, to settle his weight more comfortably, it isn't in resignation but anticipation.

"Are you reliving, avoiding, or anticipating?" Hannibal's question emerges with his breath, low and distracted, sliding heavier into his accent. Will knows his speech patterns well enough by now to feel the words without needing to hear each syllable with clarity to understand.

He answers with motion first, a long possessive stroke that shuts Hannibal's mouth and turns his cheek into the counter as his hands slide wide over to try and find a grip that will spare the points of his hips the sharpness of the stainless edge, but he finds very little purchase. His hands leave heavier prints as he grows warmer.

For a moment, Will sees the pendulum again, a sharp swing into reliving – seeing the blood seep over Hannibal’s skin, through it, until what is beneath him is the crime scene Jack had made him stare at earlier, made him analyse and pretend to find puzzling – then to avoiding, to Will blatantly taking out his fear on the only person he knows will take it, will allow it. Perhaps retaliate, perhaps cause just as much suffering in turn, but for the moment, for a time, just let it happen.

When it swings again, it settles on anticipation, and Will lets out a long, slow breath before letting go of Hannibal’s wrist, his palm slippery from holding him still, and drawing his nails down his side, red marks in parallel paths across from where he’d cut Hannibal – both sides hurt, in a way, both sides claimed.

“I’m mirroring.” He murmurs gently, licking his bottom lip into his mouth and resting his forehead against Hannibal’s skin, “Learning.”

His voice, too, takes on a slightly muted tone, words not quite as articulated, just as distracted, slipping into the small space of Hannibal’s mind that the man has left open to him, taking in the anticipation the other feels, making it his own.

“Perfecting.”

Hannibal's pleased sound is not wholly the result of Will's hand on his cock, still stroking mercilessly even now that he's fully hard beneath Will's fingers. Will suspects that he had never truly entertained the idea of a progeny, but that he had not shed enough of his humanity to reject one when presented.

There was still that old scent, faint and faded, of human drive within him. Hannibal felt things, in his own quiet way. The isolation, at times, Will was certain. But only when the order called for it, only when it was not a compulsion like washing his hands or shifting a book to sit exactly so on his table, but when the steps required it.

What was fascinating was that he allowed this. It was as far from his order as Will could drag him without risking immediate retaliatory violence. 

"And how do you see perfection?" Hannibal prompts, shifting wider so that Will's hips saddle against his own, pushing up off the counter and into Will's mouth when he closes it on Hannibal's shoulder again, into his hand when he worries the cut he'd left and traces a long line of blood down Hannibal's side.

Will doesn’t answer in words, just directs his control from restraining to devouring; the taste of blood still between his teeth, the spicy, strangely earthy smell that is purely Hannibal against his nose, around him enough to drown in. He knows it so well now, another familiar stability – it never changes. Still stable when Hannibal is angry, just as when he’s pleased, the same smell that Will burrows against the pillows to smile into in the mornings as the one that lingers in Hannibal’s office.

Hannibal’s skin has grown cooler, from being pressed into the metal as well as having the fabric of his clothing cut away – goosebumps rising down his spine, fading to smooth unmarred expanse at his sides. Will slides his thumb over the slowly-drying blood and watches the skin pimple under his touch a moment, a tremble shifting Hannibal’s hips back against his own again.

He sees perfection in every shift the man’s body makes against him, with every new cloud of air pressing against the metal and fading away. To Will, this is anticipation, for more, for other, it’s promises and solutions, the chance to grow into himself, develop his own control, find his own steering…

He draws both hands to the waistline of Hannibal’s slacks to push them down to his knees, peeling the boxers off after, one hand splayed against a warm thigh, the other fumbling with the catch on his own pants – pulling the button through the hole, tugging down the zip, his forehead pressed against the middle of Hannibal’s back as it arches in a pleased, languid stretch to accommodate their change in position, encourage it perhaps.

As much as Hannibal disapproved of this in his kitchen, he has made allowances. The lube hides in plain sight, a bottle of aloe near the sink for the purpose. Will has to stretch to reach, but he does, and Hannibal doesn't buck him off in the moment of weakness, instead taking the opportunity to step out of his pants, and neatly out of his loafers and socks, nudging them aside with a faint look of mourning at the puddle of fabric produced.

The marks on his own body he makes no effort to see. There are a surprising amount, William had learned. He had not asked the stories, but divined a few for himself and he supposed the rest would reveal their origins to his insight eventually, if they mattered enough.

Hannibal will not mourn the healing marks or bruised skin the same way he will the suit, Will knows. He places surprisingly little value on his own form. 

He slicks his fingers and considers what he is offered, Hannibal braced low and open, waiting for Will to decide how he'll proceed. It's a moment that should be anxious, but it isn't - instead it lays open and easy between them, in a sick sort of trust. An intimate knowing of the other, that Hannibal expected him at his worst, could take him there, and he wouldn't flinch away or fail to meet his eyes. 

Will's hands don't shake when he sets the bottle aside. 

The impatience has settled to a dull throb beneath Will’s skin, like a heartbeat but not his own, another duality, another connection. His fingers slide in slowly, careful, seeking only to get Hannibal ready enough to not feel outright agony at the breach, but he makes no effort to stretch him. This is a possession, just as any of Hannibal’s have been.

The sound he makes is surprisingly helpless when he pushes in, nose drawing up Hannibal’s spine until his own back is arched, his lips catching on the damp skin under him as he settles. He grits his teeth, eyes closed, and just stays, pressed deep and close, for a moment. Vaguely he’s aware of the music still playing throughout the house, of how harsh Hannibal’s breathing is under him. He’s aware of how hard his heart is hammering, the same heavy beat it sets when he takes someone’s life and feels theirs slow to a stop under his fingers…

When he pulls back, it’s just as slow, as careful, before his fingers grip tighter against Hannibal’s hip and he drives back in, brutal, unforgiving – exactly how Hannibal had wanted him to be. Exactly as he was becoming, with mirroring and learning and perfecting himself.

Hannibal gets an arm up beneath himself, to save his skin some of the friction against the steel, and Will feels the exact moment when he finds his focus, feels the change in resistance the same way he knew Hannibal had felt every second of the stretch, and his soft noise on exhale more sound than Will can get out of him with patience.

He doesn't pull away, even from the mirror to his own ferocity. He is not afraid of himself, and therefore he is not afraid of Will Graham. There's a certain power in the lack of fear, but at the same time it agitates him, frustrates him. It's simply that they have not rounded each other's corners.

Will pushes mercilessly and shifts his grip to the counter instead, palms flat on the hard surface and finding traction hard when his palms sweat, when it gathers in lines that flow down his shoulders and settle against his tailbone and linger. The kitchen is warm, Hannibal is warmer beneath him, the bare and clean line of the back of his neck like an attractive target for Will's mouth. 

It's not long, not how fierce it is, how fast and tight from the sparse prep, and Hannibal bracing back against him as if to encourage him deeper, to allow him to mark and claim now that Will had earned it. Will compounds his victory by pulling out at the last second, hearing his hiss echoed exactly in pitch and duration by Hannibal beneath him, and marks the man's back with his release. 

It's not something Hannibal would have done, but Will is not only paddling but steering these days. He leaves the stripes white and sticking, dripping, and spins Hannibal before the other has quite processed the violation, curls his hand tight around him and bends him backward over the counter while he's still pliant, until his spine must arch uncomfortably, but Hannibal still cums after two savage strokes, though he spares himself this mess at least by covering Will's hand's with both his own.

The tension breaks at last, cooling like the trapped mess in their fingers, and the first sound Will makes is a low, quiet whine, before releasing Hannibal from the painful bend and kissing him.

Unlike the sex, the kiss is gentle, an almost loving thing if that was a word either attributed to their relationship. It lasts long enough for both to need to break to draw breath, and Will rests his forehead between Hannibal’s collarbones, catching his breath and surrendering the control back as easily as he had claimed it.

For a moment, neither move, then Will pulls back, eyes down, and without a word leans over to retrieve the cloth still folded meticulously four and a half inches to the left of the sink. He sets the water running before wetting the cloth under it, not quite lukewarm, and then moves to clean Hannibal’s hands gently.

His back is still a mess, and he knows Hannibal can feel it, that it makes his skin crawl now that the heat of impulsiveness and passion is passed, and he makes no effort to clean it. He does, however, take specific care to make sure the front of him is cleaned, that they both are, before meeting Hannibal’s eyes and reaching over to turn the tap off.

“Jack thinks the killing could be attributed to the copycat.” He says, perhaps finally answering the question so long ago asked of him.

Hannibal exhales, straightens slowly to regain his balance, to find his composure even laid bare of all his careful trappings of civility. Beneath the suits, he is a man. Beneath the man he is not quite a monster but certainly an animal - the sort with a gaping mouth and sharp teeth. A snake, a wolf perhaps.

"Jack would be right, but not in the way he expects," Hannibal answers, faintly amused. "And what did you think, Will? What did you see when you looked?"

Hannibal claims the cloth from Will's fingers, before it can return to the counter. It will go directly into the laundry from here, as it belongs in Hannibal's order, but Hannibal continues the motion, curls his empty hand so his thumb pushes along Will's cheekbone, so his fingertips can hook into the soft skin behind his jaw and pull him forward. This kiss is not quite as gentle, but it is still tender, while Hannibal waits his answer.

“A mess?”

The voice is just as much indifferent as it is amused, and Will stiffens before turning his head to see Abigail in the archway. Her lips press together in an almost gleeful expression and she holds up Hannibal’s iPad.

“You made the front page.” The glaring red background of Tattlecrime.com flashes briefly before she flips the cover and holds it to her chest. She keeps her eyes deliberately on Will before taking a breath and walking to sit in the leather chair facing the workbench.

“I was going to ask how dinner was going but I guess I could get pizza or something.”

“You will do no such thing.” Hannibal turns Will’s head gently to kiss him again before letting him go and bending to collect his clothes from the floor. He steps back into his pants, frowning when only the zipper holds them up, and turns to leave the kitchen.

“Dinner is on schedule. Excuse me.”

Will watches with eyes narrowed in amusement, and perhaps only a shadow of the dark lust that had possessed him as Hannibal’s messy back retreats upstairs, no doubt to take a shower and change into something proper.

“He must really love you if he let you fuck him in the kitchen.” Abigail drawls, deadpan, turning Will’s attention to her again. He frowns, jaw tight. There isn’t so much resentment from Abigail as there is a deliberate need to get under his skin.

“How long were you there?”

"Long enough to know it's not all sunshine and daffodils in the Lecter house," she says, smiling wolfishly. Her spirits have raised, her body language changed back into something easy and comfortable and young. "Or is it the Graham house?"

She hesitates, and then leans on the arm of the chair, the iPad in her lap and her chin propped in her palm. "Or are you going to hyphenate? That's so modern."

Will does his belt in sharp motions, feeling the leather slide and then lock into place when the tongue finds the groove. 

"I like it," she decides after a moment. "Not the whole... questionable substances on the counter thing. But you look happy. He always does, but you..."

She rolls her shoulders, pushes her lower lip out into an expression that's half thoughtful pout and half smile. "It's easier when you're happy, right?"

Will watches her and feels, again, the strange tug at his heart that warns him that he is caught between two people who can kill without remorse, without regret or guilt or fear to. That he has to work to draw his mask up, to keep it, when they have no need of such things. He finds himself swallowing.

“It’s never easy.” He says, meets her disbelieving gaze with a neutral look. “It’s not easy yet.” He amends.

It had been easy to push Hannibal down and hold him there, it had been easy to press the blade to his skin, to threaten to do it harder, again. It had been easy to dominate him and remind Hannibal that Will’s desire to kill would grow.

“It’s getting there.”

"When it becomes easy it loses impact," Hannibal answers him and Abigail both, the voice of experience. He has redressed. His hair is wet, and combed, evidence of his shower. He is turning his sleeves back carefully, quiet in only socks on the tiled floor. "There should always be a challenge somewhere." 

He recovers his iPad from Abigail's lap, has the barest glance at Lounds' screaming headlines, and then returns the device to her, disapproving. 

Will isn't sure that his statement is entirely right, even as he sinks back into a corner of the kitchen, arms crossed in the warm space that he shares. None of the family here belongs to him, and yet it's become his linked by blood as surely as any real one - by trial and fire. 

The most alien sensation he's ever empathized with, he thinks, is his own sense of belonging. It fills him up like the food he knows is not always what Hannibal presents it as, but it makes him feel just as vital and whole. When he relaxes into it, like a man with a full belly sighing his way into a reclining chair, it's just that terrifyingly easy.


End file.
